Zimbabwean luxury jeweler Alexander Mavros ventures into hospitality

Alexander Mavros, whose family built the Zimbabwean luxury jeweler Patrick Mavros, has moved into hospitality with the opening of The Palm Club, a café-brasserie in Harare that he and co-founder Benjamin Mavros plan to grow into a brand across Africa.

The first Palm Club opened in September in Borrowdale, an upscale suburb in northern Harare. The founders are already looking at further sites elsewhere in Zimbabwe and in Cape Town, Alexander Mavros said in an email to Billionaires.Africa.

The café serves specialty coffee, baked goods, all-day meals and cocktails. It uses a navy-and-white look with tropical details, and its founders describe the style as African sunshine combined with Palm Beach elegance. The service is meant to be relaxed.

"We want an everyday coffee or breakfast to feel like a small luxury," Mavros said.

The founders are aiming well beyond a single café. They want to build a recognizable African hospitality brand in the mold of The Ivy, the British café-brasserie group, with its own identity, design and social pull, and a format that can be repeated from city to city. Their longer-term plan targets lifestyle and travel destinations across Africa, with a focus on tourist hubs, and later selected international markets.

The company has not disclosed how much it has invested or when the next location will open.

Mavros tied the new business directly to his family's jewelry house. "With Patrick Mavros, we have spent decades proving that something born in Zimbabwe can stand confidently beside the best luxury brands in the world," he said in a statement. "The Palm Club comes from the same belief. Africa should be building hospitality brands with the confidence, design and standards to travel internationally, while still feeling completely at home here."

Patrick Mavros started in Zimbabwe in 1980, when its founder, a sculptor and silversmith, made a pair of earrings for his wife, Catja. Requests for his work followed, and the business grew into a family workshop in the Umwimsi Valley north of Harare. The house is known for handcrafted jewelry and objects inspired by African wildlife and landscapes, and it has boutiques in London, Cape Town, Nairobi and Mauritius.

Alexander Mavros, a son of the founder, is a key figure in the brand's growth. In an interview with Billionaires.Africa in February, he said the family's goal was to give Africa a luxury house of the kind Tiffany is for the United States and Hermès is for France. He said succession would stay within the family, noting that he and his three brothers were raised in the studio.

The Palm Club takes that ambition into food and drink. Mavros said the family wants to prove that a hospitality brand born in Zimbabwe can travel across Africa and abroad the way Patrick Mavros has. The company describes its mission as building a world-class African hospitality brand with the quality, consistency and identity to scale.

The café's slogan, "Take it Easy," appears on its logo beneath a palm tree.